education

Everyone in the Common Core debate was a winner after Gov. Doug Ducey asked the State Board of Education to review and overhaul the controversial K-12 academic standards. Or at least that’s how many advocates on both sides of the issue felt.

Despite the uproar surrounding them, most of the goals contained in Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards seem anything but controversial. Use abstract nouns. Form and use regular and irregular verbs. Tell and write time. Work with addition and subtraction equations. On and on, page after page.

Saying an outside review is necessary, a House committee refused late on March 25 to require a “forensic audit” of the $64 million a year Tucson Unified School District is spending on desegregation expenses.

Saying the tactic is ripe for ballot fraud, Republican lawmakers are determined to criminalize a get-out-the-vote technique that Democrats, teachers’ unions and Latino organizations have used to increase voter turnout in mostly minority, Democratic neighborhoods.

Gov. Doug Ducey sought to split the middle in the contentious debate over Common Core, calling on the Arizona Board of Education to review and possibly replace parts of the K-12 education standards, but rejecting their wholesale replacement.

Gov. Doug Ducey named five new members to the Arizona Board of Education, perhaps the most eagerly awaited appointments the new governor has to make, thanks the board’s role in adopting the controversial K-12 education standards known as Common Core.

Gov. Doug Ducey and Republican lawmakers have boasted their budget includes more spending on education than ever in Arizona’s history. But the numbers behind the cuts to higher education paint a different picture for the state’s university system and community colleges.

Now that the budget includes $24 million for Gov. Doug Ducey’s Arizona Public School Achievement District plan, the Ninth Floor said no additional legislation is needed for the governor to put his marquee education plan into action.

Many school district officials and education leaders say Gov. Doug Ducey’s “Classrooms First” slogan and the oft-repeated boast that Arizona will spend more than ever on K-12 education next year are misleading and don’t reflect how budget cuts will affect schools in 2016.